On Tuesday, February 13, 2001 3:48 AM, Krazy Kiwi wrote:

> After a very stressful time in NZ convering my baby sister's wedding I was
> glad to be heading back to OZ

> We get to Strike's Reef & put our feet up .. this is the life :-) Strike
> gets out some old dive mags and we flick through them. Soon I am laughing
> my head off at some of the stories - told 'as is' by the person involved
in
> whatever project they were doing at the time when the incident occurred.
> What gems! My favourite was a story involving stingrays.

They were copies of the Royal Naval Diving Magazine - a sort of 'House
Journal' to keep everyone abreast of what divers were doing on ships in
different parts of the world - from the 'sixties.  Re-reading some of them
with Viv reminded me that there's some good (black humour!) stuff that's
worth trotting out and posting to the list at some future time.  (It's also
a reminder that the more things change the more that they stay the same!)
:-)

> Strike phones his mate Bill .. William Fitzgerald, affectionately called
> Bill Fitz. Can we come over for a visit to his divers den to help empty
the
> beer fridge. A time is arranged & we zip over for a couple of hours. What
a
> hoot that man is .. we hit it off straight away when on being introduced
to
> him he sez to Strike, with a twinkle in his eye, "thot ya said she was fat
> & ugly"

He's an ex-Chief Petty Officer who has that gravelly-voiced growl and knack
for handing out compliments that seems common to all NCO's! :-)

In 1961 he was one of eight of the Navy's most experienced divers who were
called in to free the sluice gates on the Eucumbene Dam; a part of the Snowy
River project to divert the course of the river and irrigate arid parts of
Australia.

To get to the jammed sluiced gate that lay at a depth of 260 feet, the
divers had to dive through ice on the surface of the lake and remove twenty
heavy trash racks placed at intervals down the tower.  Helium was still
unavailable in Oz and they were obliged to use air and the Cousteau Constant
Volume suit.  Using plastic explosives to free the trash racks, they faced
physiological as well as psychological problems caused by the cold, zero
visibility and narcosis.


One of the log book entries reads:
"14th March 1961.  Depth 257 feet.  The diver had apparently lost
consciousness on reaching the depth.  He failed to respond to signals and
the order was given for the stand-by diver to enter the water and Fitzgerald
to be hauled to the surface.  As the standby diver entered the water,
Fitzgerald appeared at the surface still breathing but incapable of
coordinated movement.  The stand-by diver immediately pulled him down to the
90 feet decompression stop and escorted him up through the remaining
stoppages.  On reaching the surface 47 minutes later he was suffering from a
severe headache and was partially overcome by cold."

According to Bill, on reaching the bottom he was asked what he could see.
"Nothing!" he said.  "Are Your eyes open?"  The cleaned up version of his
response goes something like: "I don't know!  At 260 feet in the pitch black
how do I know if my eyes are open when I can't see anything?  I don't even
know if I'm bleedin' well conscious or not!"

> What a lil devil he was, my kind of man ... I like those with a sense of
> humour :-) You can guess what the rest of the afternoon was like from then
> on .. made even spicier when Bruce turned up as his sense of humour is,
> shall we say, slightly warped.

That's the nicest thing anyone's ever said about Bruce!  :-)

(snip)
> Soon it was time to head off home to catch up with Sylvia before dinner.
It
> was such a beautiful evening they had decided it was Fish & Chip night.
Off
> we went to the headlands at Dee Why with our bottle of plonk & ate till we
> couldnt fit no more in. It was so peaceful in the spot Sylvia & Strike
> chose to sit .. a fantastic view out to sea .. and Strike, due to the fact
> he has yet to see a whale, was trying to pull a fast one on us by pointing
> out imaginary whales in the far distance ;-)

I most be the only person living on the Sydney beaches who's still to see a
whale cruising by.  I've seen them everywhere else but never here!  It's a
measure of my feelings of inadequacy that I keep pretending to see them!
:-)

(snip)

> Next morning the weather is grey as. Typical! Im ready to dive & the
> weather has turned its worst. We chuff off towards the Manly Dive Centre
> checking the beach out on our way & it doesnt look good. When you have
lots
> of surfers sitting out on the breakers off Shelly Beach its means you have
> to pick another dive destination that day .. bummer :-((

Fairlight is the sort of place that you dive when you're not having a dive.
It's in Sydney Harbour facing out towards the Heads - and I've yet to see a
Seadragon there.  :-(

(snip)
> I feel guilty .. I am wearing my semi-drysuit ... Strike is wearing a
lycra
> suit .. Birdo doesnt bother with a dive jacket - I feel very overdressed!
> Little did they know what they were letting themselves in for - a very
> noticeable thermocline. In 9 metres of water it started out as 22 degrees
> celcius at the top, 19 degrees at 5 metres .. and a chilly 18 degrees 9
> metres.  I just know Mike Wallace will say "Bah, humbug .. that's not
cold"
> :-)) .. but for us WWW's that is winter conditions .. not the middle of
> summer.
>
> I check Strike out now & again .. he doesnt appear to be affected by the
> cold .. must be that Pommie blood eh! He later fesses up to being "bloody
> freezing from the inside out". It was definitely brass monkeys diving for
> those not suited up for the conditions.

It was so cold that I had to take in the slack on the crutch strap!  :-)

(snip)

> We check out what each other has seen in the nooks & crannies - numb ray,
> lionfish, nudibranchs, lotsa large sea urchins everywhere, scorpionfish of
> all shapes & sizes, a large school of old wives, octopus, leatherjackets,
> lizardfish, various crabs in shells, hingeback shrimp, gobies of all
> colours, enquisitive wrasse, hawkfish, damsels shooing us away from their
> territory, cardinalfish .. and so on. Strike & Co. can fill in the gaps
> with other critters Ive left out coz I didnt keep a log of this dive & am
> only relying on memory of what I can recall seeing.

Bloody hell!  Did we actually see that much? <BWG>  (BTW.  You left out the
two wrecks and our 'penetration' dive on them!)  :-)

It was good to see - and dive - with Viv again, however! :-)

Strike